Playing Out Scenarios

Alan: You just have to want to be in the market for enthusiasts to get it. Samsung has a gaming notebook, and all you need for a good desktop that'll sell to gamers is good cooling, a good power supply, and an unrestricted BIOS. Actually, if you apply TV firmware to PCs, LG actually has the most customer-friendly firmware.

Chris: Well, it's a time and money thing, right? Often it's the case that we build PCs ourselves when there's a perceived savings that outweighs the time investment involved. I still put my own machines together, but I don't look forward to it nearly as much as I did 15 years ago, if only because I've done the same thing dozens of times. II used to format every couple of weeks; at the time I enjoyed it. With that said, the predominant choice is: build or buy. The idea of "buy and tear-down" still seems pretty fringe.

Alan: Scenario two is that HP is acquired by a firm that is unable to reverse the downward spiral of PCs. If the new buyer is unable to sustain HP over the next few years, it won't be the buyer's fault. This will just mean that the PC market is contracting significantly and impacts the enthusiast market in that we may see fewer companies investing in PC products. It will actually get better before it gets worse as each company tries to save itself by producing high-risk/high-reward products. I'm reminded of the DFI LANParty line of motherboards, any number of sound cards, or even HP/webOS. The most exotic and best products were when the companies were "doubling-down" on something as one final hurrah.

Chris: Let's define downward spiral, first. Five percent in Q2 (in the U.S.) in a depressed economy? Call the creation of exotic products throwing good money after bad, and it's easy to pick on an easy target. However, that's not always a Hail Mary pass, either. We've seen plenty of halo products that spawn derivatives and wind up heralding a successful age—Athlon 64 FX, for example?

Alan: Yeah but the Athlon 64 FX was an era of wealth and prosperity. We used to spend $1000 on a CPU! CPUs have gotten faster but also cheaper. GPUs somehow are still expensive. SSDs are getting cheaper but also command a premium. Motherboards have always been around $100-200.

Chris: All the more reason why this is a bad time for a spin-off. Just look at the all of the failed IPOs from China this year.

Intel still charges $1000 for its top-end enthusiast CPU…because it can. AMD would charge $1000 as well, if it had something competitive. The only reason we pay so much less for processors today is because AMD slots in between price point in Intel's lineup where it can offer competitive performance. Frankly, I think that if Intel wanted to charge more for its Sandy Bridge-based chips, it could (come on—$220 -2500Ks blow away even more expensive models in Intel's own LGA 1366-based lineup). But it's so afraid of getting burnt on anti-competitive practices that it pulls the bar down.

Alan: Scenario three is the one where HP doesn't find a buyer. This is definitely a possibility. Right now, HP's PC operations are profitable. But we know HP is considering selling because it doesn’t think it's sustainable in the long-term. Any company buying HP has to have a plan in place that will work in this economy to somehow outdo HP or fix the problems that HP had. Samsung might be able to pull that one off, but it's also a big risk. Making a Lenovo-esque move in which acquiring HP allows a company to go from unknown to major international player may not be a feasible in today's economy. The demand for PCs won't change with the collapse of HP. A company like Dell will automatically see increased sales as customers are forced to look for a different option. But in principle, every PC company will see a little bit of an increased piece of the pie. After all, the sum of market share always equals 100%. This would truly be a disaster to enthusiasts as it would show that the PC market is so limited that the #1 company was left out to pasture. Then as the PC market gets smaller and smaller, enthusiast level manufacturers will be forced to make high-risk/high-reward moves leading to the collapse of a number of companies. The next six months will be interesting times.

Chris: The glass doesn't have to be half-full, though. Is the market so limited that the #1 company was left out to pasture, or did the #1 company decide that a different segment of the technology market, which, by the way, still depends on the success of people using PCs and PC-like devices would simply be more profitable to chase after? Does HP not ultimately fail if, at the end of the day, it zeros in on the enterprise only to watch the PC market evaporate? Or, are we assuming mobility will fill that gap in its entirety?

Look, clearly, thanks to Apple, the tablet has been proven to be a successful form factor where slates based on PC technology failed to gain traction. Even netbook sales slowed dramatically after the iPad emerged. But I don't think mobile devices are destined to kill PCs any more than I worry Nintendo's 3DS will inhibit the success of Wii U. That is to say, you don't pick up one and drop the other.

Who is Alan Dang? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power.

To sum it up: HP is drunk with silly ideas and therefore wants to jump ship. They said that iPad was successful... you know WHY? Because Apple spend a lot of money CONVINCING people that iPad is great! It's called advertisement! So do yourself a favor and advertise your product, otherwise of course no one will buy it!

And you don't need to target an "enthusiast" market to make a good product. Simply stop using these crappy PSUs, ugly-looking chassis and faulty boards with locked BIOS. Is it really that hard? They keep mentioning how great and innovative their workstations are, but what about mainstream?

And to address the subject of enthusiast PC becoming a "niche market"... I really don't care what they call them. Sure, the prices will go up, as they did with above-mentioned example of musical setups. But when the world will be tired of playing with toys, desktops will be there.

There's a whole bunch of arguments for desktops dying for an average user. Let me address a few...

1) Cloud computing. However, when you think of it a little, average user doesn't need it, because we have external storage that can be used with all your electronics. I've seen people saying that cloud storage will be perfect so that they can access their data from all their iCrap - sorry, you're a minority; the rest of us have USB on our tablets and whatnot.

2) Tablets and smartphones. When you get tired of typing on the touchscreen and throwing birds at pigs, calling yourself a gamer, come back. Before you say "we're gonna hook up a keyboard and a screen to our tablet, and THEN!..", let me just tell you that you're coming back to desktop already.

3) Technology gets better, and soon our tablets will be just as powerful as desktop PCs, blah blah blah. A foolish argument, because I don't see what prevents PCs using the same improvement and getting even better, still leaving mobile devices far behind.

These "experts" keep complaining that the people don't buy new PCs every month, thus depriving them of profit... that's right, you greedy bastards. We won't buy new PCs just for the hell of it. Phones and tablets are made for that (though, if you get a really good one, it will serve you for years, unless you're into getting the most hyped device all the time), PCs are meant to be bought and used until you NEED an upgrade, not just WANT. For some, want = need, but not everyone can afford it. Just like they said, if a person already has a 2-year-old PC and it can do everything s/he needs, there will be no upgrade, and it makes sense.

Tablets and phones are made to be changed all the time - just look at the OS support... old Android phones would often not support the newest Android, and I don't see a reason for it other than trying to force the consumer to upgrade. After all, even my 10-year old PC supports newest Linux and would support Win7 if it would have enough RAM.

So, please quit acting like there's something terribly wrong with PCs. We know that you're simply unhappy with comsumers buying a device once and then walking away and not paying you regularly for some reason. So you want to force cloud computing, subscription-based games and streaming services... convert this one-time purchase into a money-sucking session, by all means. I understand that intention. It's perfectly healthy for business. It's not very healthy for a customer, though, but when did it ever stop you?

All that trouble arises from general computer illiteracy of a common user. You don't need to be able to come up with a perfect desktop build out of your head or remember the list of all CPUs ever made. You just need a little bit of common sense to see what you are paying for. So, what do you want, a device that you buy once and that can do all your work for you (hell, it can be even portable, get a leptop, lol) or a much hyped shiny toy that will play Angry Birds but cost as much as small APU-powered laptop and that becomes obsolete within a few months? I know what I want and why I want it, what about you?

Who is Alan Dang? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power.

AlanDangWho is Alan Dang? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power.

Good article on a topic that I think a lot of enthusiasts have been dreading. I find it interesting that you guys often metaphorically relate hardware development back to the automotive industry. If PC hardware is the cars, then software is the road network that people driving have to put up with. At the moment I believe that in both cases it is the roadnetwork/software that is the limiting factor. This decade has given us the most thrilling performance cars with incredible bang-for-buck such as the GTR, Corvette, Camaro, M3, Focus RS etc etc. However most of these cars are so fast that most people could never really use them to their potential on a day to day basis. The same can be said about modern PC hardware - its overpowered for the average user. Only the relative handful of consumers who take their GTR to the track on weekends/spend their weekend playing FPS games, can actually take advantage of these products. This in turn is severely limiting the market potential of what on the surface looks like such an amazing product base. People know that even though 0-60 in 3.5 and top 180 is incredible, it makes no difference when your stuck starring at fenders and red lights all day.

Really, the development in hardware tech is amazing, but what we need to keep it moving is a new class of ubiquitous productivity software that demands better hardware. My suggestion for this is to create more advanced interfaces between the user and the PC - we need to replace the mouse and keyboard with motion detection devices and speech recog that actually works. Once the software can do this I believe we will see a drastic increase in performance demand for office software.

The big difference is that, "back in the day," building your own computer was cheaper than buying a computer. In 2011, that's not true. The reason to build a computer is that you can get the parts you want

I think it's more about the upgrade cycle, different parts need to be upgraded at different rates, so buying a whole new computer every few years is terribly expensive compared to just upgrading the parts as the need arises. (off the top of my head...) My keyboard and speakers are older than 10 years, my case is about 9 years old, my monitors are about 7 years old, my PSU is 5 years old, my three hard-drives range in age from 6 to 2 years old. When I upgrade later this year, the only parts I will be replacing will be the motherboard, memory, cpu, and graphics card, and for around $400-$500 I'll have a computer beats the pants off any $400-$500 pre-built. (the one thing it won't have will be a blu-ray drive, but I can't remember the last time I even opened my DVD-drive, so whatever).

So if you think of it as a cycle, I think you'll find it is much cheaper to maintain a high-end computer (or even a mid to low end one) by continuously upgrading a custom build.

demonhorde665cheers TO THAT , dumbesta rticle ehader i've seen on tom's todateNO real enthusiast buys name brand , they build thier own period. pfft , alien ware, lenovo HP just pffft only a wanna be enthusiast would bther with any of these

I'm just going to assume you didn't read it through (rather than completely missing the point).

legacy7955This so called article sounds like "marketing" to meClearly an agenda going on here, excessive greed by Leo Apotheker and his clown posse. Notice that "they" keep trying to "INFER" that the PSG division is NOT profitable without saying so, but then have to admit that it IS profitable.

And same here. It's pretty clearly spelled out in the story that HP's PSG is profitable. Nowhere does it claim otherwise.

Though I believe HP's downfall probably won't affect the enthusiast market, the analysis stepped outside the box. If I understood it correctly, this article tried to explain the enthusiast market to the success of the consumer market, which was what I was not expecting.

Oh, and it was a pleasant surprise seeing the NTT DoCoMo i-mode mentioned!

It even has reason to purchase webOS. That would be an excellent platform to run on its smart TVs, phones, and tablets. Samsung could do what HP couldn't by using Samsung memory, displays, and storage.

Again, load of BS. Samsung already has Android and Bada. The hell would they do with another OS?!

Intel still charges $1000 for its top-end enthusiast CPU…because it can. AMD would charge $1000 as well, if it had something competitive. The only reason we pay so much less for processors today is because AMD slots in between price point in Intel's lineup where it can offer competitive performance. Frankly, I think that if Intel wanted to charge more for its Sandy Bridge-based chips, it could (come on—$220 -2500Ks blow away even more expensive models in Intel's own LGA 1366-based lineup). But it's so afraid of getting burnt on anti-competitive practices that it pulls the bar down.

This is another bunch of self-contradicting BS. First, he mentions i7-980/990X, then suddenly jumps to SB... And how is Intel keeping prices low just because they're afraid of "getting burnt on anti-competitive practices"?! They're doing it because otherwise nobody would buy Sandy Bridge, that's all!

In 2011, I'd love to build a small system like the FireBird. Three hundred and fifty watts doesn't sound like a lot, but it's plenty for a Core i5-2500K or i7-2600K, a Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and an SSD or two. I'm not sure where I can find a cheap, reliable external PSU with that kind of power.

What. The. Hell. So he thinks 350W is enough for i7 plus GTX 560 Ti? This is final; I don't think that either of the two people in the interview know enough about PCs. Or am I missing something here?

But PC power supplies are almost always a box at the back of the chassis with a bunch of wires that travel everywhere.

For hell's sake, stop trying to improve something that doesn't need improvement. The PSU is a box with a bunch of wires that travel everywhere because that's what a PSU IS!

Quote:

On the enthusiast level, we have awesome power supplies like the Seasonic X series, but the best we've been able to do is sleeve the cables to limit turbulence and to have modular PSUs so that we can take out unused cables.

So far, I haven't seen a single mainstream HP desktop with a good PSU. They all crap out within a year or two. And it's always either a mess of unneeded cables (who the hell needs 104-pin power connectors in 2010?!) or so few cables that they're barely enough to connect everything that the PC had in it when it was bought.